3D print Ceres

How do you turn a region of Ceres into an STL?

Open the generator, switch it to Ceres, pick a landmark from the list or drag the selection box over any other region, and choose a jigsaw puzzle or a solid ornament in a circle, square or hexagon. OrbitStudio builds the model from the elevation data and shows it in 3D before you download anything, with the terrain and the frame already separated and colored. Ceres models start at true scale: a small region already stands tall on a model 200 mm wide.

Generating a model and turning it around in 3D is free and needs no account. A free account adds puzzle slicing, custom frame text and a library of three models. Downloading the STL and pre-colored 3MF files takes a Plus or Merchant plan, or one credit from a pass. The frame text, the puzzle cover and the wall mount work on Ceres as they do on the other worlds; on a small, steep region the cover sits high on the peaks, and the generator says so.

How much of Ceres can be printed?

Almost all of it. Ceres is the largest object in the asteroid belt, and NASA's Dawn spacecraft went into orbit around it on March 6, 2015 and mapped it until it ran out of fuel in 2018. JPL's Dawn Gravity Science Team built a shape model of the whole dwarf planet from about 38,000 of its images. Where Dawn never saw the ground in sunlight, the model is not a measurement: JPL filled those places with a smooth ellipsoid. That is most of the ground within five degrees of the south pole, a third of the band from 80° to 85° S and scattered crater floors further north, down to about 60° S. The generator refuses a selection that reaches one of them, and every selection past 80° S. On the map that ground is shaded.

North of 60° S the same thing happened only on a few small shadowed crater floors, most of them near the north pole: OrbitStudio fills those smoothly from the ground around them, and they print smooth. Everything else, more than 99% of Ceres, prints from the measured heights.

How much relief does Ceres have?

A lot for its size. Park et al. measured heights from 7.3 kilometers below to 9.5 kilometers above the ellipsoid that fits Ceres's slightly flattened shape. In the file OrbitStudio builds from, the lowest point lies in Rongo Crater, 7,429 meters below that reference, and the highest is Yamor Mons, a mountain near the north pole, 9,512 meters above it. Ahuna Mons, the lone mountain in the south, rises about 4 kilometers above the plain around it, and Occator Crater is about 4 kilometers deep.

Heights are measured from that ellipsoid, not from a sphere. Ceres is 36 kilometers flatter at the poles than at the equator, and over a sphere every region away from the equator would print as a ramp.

Which regions of Ceres print best?

The mountains and the young craters, at true scale. The grid is 100 meters, and the smallest region on Ceres is about 33 kilometers across, which is what the entry for Ahuna Mons frames: on a model 200 millimeters across its view comes out about 47 millimeters tall from the lowest point to the summit. Haulani, a young crater 34 kilometers across, holds about 20 millimeters of relief in its view, and Occator about 10.

The great basins are wider and gentler. Kerwan, the largest crater, framed at about 360 kilometers, holds about 6 millimeters at true scale, and the generator suggests more exaggeration for any region over 250 kilometers. Ceres models carry no credit condition: the elevation data is NASA mission data, released under Creative Commons Zero, and JPL asks that no one claims or implies that NASA, JPL or Caltech endorses a product, as section 08 of the terms explains.

Is the map a photograph of Ceres?

No. The map shows JPL's colorized map of Ceres, built from Dawn's camera images at 140 meters per pixel with color added from other Dawn data, so the colors are not what an eye would see. Where Dawn took no color data, in the far south and around the north pole, it is gray. The globe, and two of the map's styles, show shaded maps of the heights instead. None of it is printed: a model is made from the heights alone.

Are there landing sites on Ceres?

No. Dawn, the first spacecraft to visit Ceres, orbited it and never landed. When its fuel ran out in 2018 it was left in orbit, where it will stay for decades, so there are no landing sites to mark and Ceres models carry no markers.

Which Ceres landmarks are built in?

Thirty-one, in five groups: five mountains and domes, Occator and the dome in its center, five great basins, sixteen craters, and three chains and grooves. All are names the IAU has approved, and every box lies on measured ground. The bright spots in Occator are not on the list: they are salt, brighter than the ground around them but no higher, so they do not show in a print. Each one below opens the generator on Ceres, already flown to it.

Mountains and domes

Occator

Great basins

Craters

Chains and grooves

What is OrbitStudio?

OrbitStudio turns real elevation data into 3D-printable models. You pick a region of Ceres on a globe or a flat map, choose a jigsaw puzzle or a solid ornament, and get ready-to-print files with terrain and borders already separated and colored. No CAD, no mesh repair. The heights come from the shape model NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory made from Dawn's images, on a 100-meter grid.

Trying it is free and needs no account: pick a region, generate it and turn it around in 3D. Downloading the model — STL files and pre-colored 3MF files for Bambu Studio or OrcaSlicer — takes a Plus or Merchant plan, or one credit from a pass. The generator covers the Moon, Mars, Mercury, Venus, Pluto and Charon too.

The night sky, too

OrbitStudio Sky, the night-sky tool, turns the sky over any place, on any date from 1900 to 2100, into a 3D-printable star map. Its STL is free.